I have been asked before how to gain weight fast. Most people that are weight lifting at one time or another, usually in the winter, try to bulk up and gain a lot of muscle for the summer, of course there is the diet down afterwards but we can deal with that later.

How to gain weight fast is a question that many people that are dieting to lose think is insane but I know from personal experience that many people would like to gain weight but do not really know how. I have a former weightlifting partner who had a really hard time gaining muscle no matter what he tried.

Here are some tips on how to gain weight fast that I think would help almost anyone. Read the rest of this entry »

Looking to make a change and lose some weight? I have reviewed the top diet on the internet and you can go and read over 200 comments people have made about why this diet has worked well for them, as well as some of the problems.

Tags: christmas, diabetes, energy, food, junk food, microwave

Losing weight for good is a big topic. There will also not be much said about some fairly obvious health issues. If you smoke or have a problem with alcohol or drugs, you probably realize that this isn’t good for you. The same with overeating. Some of the methods here can help you with these issues, but I am not going to go into any detail about subjects that are so extensively covered all over the mainstream media and internet. The same with the advice to exercise. I do refer to exercise in the breathing chapter, but I don’t spell out “get x number of hours of exercise per week.” Exercise is important, but it should be tailored to you as an individual. I don’t want to imply that what I haven’t written about in detail is not important. It just isn’t the focus of this report.

What I am doing here is presenting a solid foundation upon which you can build. If you do have specific health challenges, need to lose a lot of weight, get into better shape, everything here will definitely be a good base upon which to add anything else you may need.

One final note about the focus of this report. I try, as much as possible, to give positive rather than negative advice. What I mean by that is, except where it is absolutely necessary (as with the chapter on junk foods!), I try to keep the focus on the positive –what is good for you rather than on what to avoid. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: allergy, animal products, antibiotics, athlete, Autism, Ayurvedic medicine, cancer, dairy products, depression, diabetes, energy, healthier products, healthy products, heart disease, high blood pressure, insomnia, meditation, nutritional product, obesity, Organic products, particular systems, reflexology, relaxation, restaurant food, Sleep deprivation, strenuous sports, sweet products, Swimming, vegetarian diet

If you are considering a weight loss program, you need to make sure that you lose fat not muscle. Some people focus exclusively on the scale, paying no attention to anything else, but this is a short sighted approach to losing weight.

There are two main reasons that people want to lose weight. One is to look better, which means having a more trim body shape. If you lose muscle instead of fat, your body will look flabby and you will not achieve your aim. The other main reason that people want to lose weight is to be healthy and reduce their risk of fatal or chronic diseases such as diabetes or heart disease. For this it is important to include some kind of fitness program so again you want to be sure that you do not lose the muscle that you have.

But there is another reason for retaining and preferably increasing your muscular mass. This is that muscle burns energy, i.e. calories. Muscle even burns calories when resting, so the more muscle you have, the more calories you burn even while you are watching TV. This does not mean you have to turn into a Sylvester Stallone iron-pumping giant. Unless you want to build your body, the key is to make sure that you do not lose the muscle you already have. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: diabetes, energy, glucose deficiency, heart disease, low carb diets

Except for perhaps Weight Watchers, the Adkins Diet may be the most popular diet of our time. Even if you haven’t personally tried it yet, you undoubtedly know someone who has used it. Of course, popular doesn’t always mean good.

Is the Adkins Diet the revolutionary way of life that will slash your risk of high cholesterol and have you fitting back into those jeans from high school or is it the dangerous, unbalanced way of eating that some claim it is?

One of the undisputed benefits of the Adkins Diets is simply that it works. It works quite quickly and effectively for pretty much anyone who employs the diet in its entirety. Even while eating enjoyable foods that might have previously been considered “off limits” by dieters, this diet produces results.

The secret is in the science of low carb dieting. The body has two types of fuel. The primary type of fuel the body uses is glucose, which is obtained from carbohydrates. The other type, considered the “back up plan” of the body, is ketones, which are obtained from the body’s own fat store.

When carbs are strictly limited, the body must resort to pulling fuel for energy from the body’s fat store. This built-in self-preservation system works beautifully, but is it healthy to put the body into such an altered state of functioning?

One negative to consider is the possibility of inducing what is known as “toxic overload”. This occurs when the body burns through fat too quickly. Toxins in the body are frequently stored in the fat cells, and as the fat cells are used up to fuel the body, these toxins may be released into the bloodstream.

Despite this concern, the Adkins Diet is often touted as a sound and healthy dietary regimen. While it is true that the body requires nutrients from various sources, particularly the plant sources that may be restricted by the diet, the Adkins Diet is proven to reduce both blood pressure and cholesterol. Diabetes may even be positively impacted by adherence to the Adkins Diet.

Many diets set dieters up for failure with their overly restrictive nature. Diets based on calorie reduction, in particular, cause dieters to suffer through periods of intense and uncomfortable hunger. A benefit of the Adkins Diet is its generous allowance of larger amounts of food as well as foods high in satiation, like meats.

While satisfaction with the foods a dieter is allowed to eat certainly contributes the dieter’s ability to stick with a dietary program, it is certainly not the only aspect of a diet that may impact the dieter’s quality of life. Many adherents to the Adkins Diet complain of extreme fatigue and lethargy due to the dramatic change in metabolic function.

Like most diets, the Adkins Diet provides excellent weight loss results. The real question is whether the dieter finds the results to be worth the lifestyle changes.

Tags: diabetes, energy, fatigue, food, Lethargy

Weight is measured in terms of body mass index (BMI). For adults, a healthy weight is a BMI of between 18.5 and 24.9. Overweight is a BMI of 25 to 29.9. A BMI of 30 or higher is considered obese.

Health experts say roughly 66 percent of American adults are overweight. The Obesity Society reports, 25.6 percent of Americans are obese. The extra weight is hard on the body and increases the risk for many types of chronic health problems, like heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol levels, certain types of cancer, osteoarthritis, sleep apnea, liver and gallbladder disease and respiratory problems.

Obesity in African Americans

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports rates of overweight and obesity are higher among African-Americans than whites. In a health survey conducted between 1999 and 2000, researchers found 69.6 percent of blacks and 62.3 percent of whites were overweight. There is a much higher disparity in rates of obesity, with 39.9 percent of blacks being obese versus 28.7 percent of whites. Among African-American women, four out of five are overweight or obese. Low-income African-American women have the highest risks of being overweight.

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Tags: cancer, center for disease control, diabetes, gallbladder disease, heart disease, high blood pressure, liver disease, nurse, obesity, Obesity Society, osteoarthritis, physician, sleep apnea, Stephanie Ward, stroke, Temple University School of Medicine

Mens Health has a great article on the nutrients and eating skills necessary to lose fat. I usually hate the slant of these articles because I thing the target them at 18 year old kids getting ready to go to the bar but thats just my attitude. The article is great and I am going to paraphrase the points here as I think there is some knowledge I can add and the article was a little wordy.

1. To lose weight, you must cut calories
The low-fat/low-carbohydrate debate comes down to this: You still have to eat fewer calories than you burn if you want to lose weight. Every study I looked at shows this. The perfect weight-loss diet is the one you can live with, whether you cut fat, carbs, or some combination.

2. Take Whey protein
A daily shake made with two scoops of whey protein, fruit (fresh or frozen berries or a banana), and water or crushed ice will decrease hunger. You can buy whey protein at any grocery store nowadays, this is the best option for protein enhancement in your diet.

3. Meat kills fat
Protein takes the most calories to assimilate and digest, followed by carbohydrates, followed by fat. Animal proteins increase thermogenesis more than vegetable proteins, so the best calorie-burning foods are lean meats. Build your dinner around lean chicken, beef, or pork. That way, you’re burning the most calories through digestion at the end of the day, when your metabolism is slower. This is one of the big reasons that I think people are too concerned about their fat intake but at the same time do not eat enough protein.
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Tags: colon cancer, consistent energy supply, dairy products, diabetes, fish-oil supplements, food, heart attacks, heart disease, inflammation, MDlabs.com., oil, osteoporosis, potato chips

Have you ever heard of Psyliium Husk? Psyllium is a type of small seed that is almost pure fiber. Taking a lot of fiber is supposed to help you to control your digestion, lower cholesterol and perhaps even lower the chance of Diabetes.

Flax Seed Oil has become really popular lately as a very high Omega 3 supplement. The advantage of taking Flax seed meal is that it is a powder that can be used for cooking as an addition to flour in recipes or as I will illustrate below.

Psyllium Husk when you buy it in the store comes in a small bag (at least mine did) and is very dry and looks like sharp pieces of dust. Flax seed meal on the other hand is a bit darker colored but is still very small pieces.

This is the way I have been told to take this so you can try to follow my lead or use these two products in some other way. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: diabetes

We have all beleived that aspirin use will lower the risk of heart attack, mostly becuase it thins the blood. The problem I have always foudn though is that too much aspirin will stop the blood from clotting quickly and this in itslef almost led to a quick trip to the hospital for my wife last year.

This new study below though seems to show that it is not so obvious as to wether Aspirin really helps to prevent heart attacks but in itslef it is a good read with lots of findings

Long-term, low-dose aspirin provides no clear net value for primary prevention of cardiovascular events in apparently healthy adults, according to a meta-analysis of patient-level data.

In people not known to have cardiovascular disease, aspirin reduced composite MI, stroke, and vascular death rates to 0.51% per year compared with 0.57% among controls for a relative 12% reduction, according to Colin Baigent, B.M.B.Ch., of the University of Oxford, England, and colleagues in the Antithrombotic Trialists’ Collaboration. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: American Heart Association, cardiovascular disease, Colin Baigent, coronary heart disease, diabetes, heart attack, heart attacks, heart disease, high blood pressure, Michigan, stroke, U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, United Kingdom, University of Oxford

High intensity interval training (HIIT) is a great way to both improve performance and to also lose weight quickly. HIIT is a different way of doing cardio with just a couple of rules to remember:

First, your running session should only be 15-30 minutes.

Secondly, sessions should have a 2:1 ratio in terms of time. so a session may be something as 60 seconds jog, 30 seconds sprint alternating

An example of a HIIT session may be as follows: Begin with a five minute warm up jog at about a medium intensity followed by a couple of minutes of stretching. Then start with a jog at about medium intensity for 60 seconds and then sprint hard for 30 to 60  seconds. Keep alternating this for 20 minutes or so and then at the end you can do some lower level jogging for 5 minutes as a cooldown.

This kind of workout is very difficult, especially the first few times that you try it and so it would be a good idea to only do it every second day and gauge how you are recovering from the workouts.

There have been a lot of studies on the high intensity interval training over the last few years and they seem to show that this is a very effective method for improving fitness as well as a nice change from regular running and workouts. One of the most important reasons that High intensity interval training works is because when you stress your body at the highest level you will burn a lot more fat then when running at a lower level jog.

Some proponents of HIIT say that to drop weight faster you would want to do this training on an empty stomach and I would have to agree with that. The idea is that since your body has no available calories to burn that it would replace muscle glycogen by burning fat. I would love to see more studies on this since it seems to make sense but there is not much evidence of it except for people saying that it seems to work.

Recently it has been shown that two weeks of HIIT can substantially improve insulin action in young healthy men. HIIT may therefore represent a viable method for prevention of type-2 diabetes.

Tags: diabetes

I always love hearing the myths and lies about fitness and thinking about where they cme from. Here is a list of lies, or at least partial lies and why. Changing your mindset to reflect reality is  on  of the best things that you can do to make better eating and exercise decisions.

A lot of cardio is the most efficient way to lose body fat. FALSE!

Excessive cardio will strip muscle mass and body fat. This is definitely not the most efficient method for losing body fat. Once you begin stripping muscle mass, your body becomes less efficient at burning body fat. Muscle is metabolically active, which simply means it stimulates the metabolism.

For each pound of muscle you put on, you will burn up to 50 additional calories per day. If you strip muscle mass, all you accomplish is sabotaging your efforts to efficiently reduce body fat. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: chemicals, diabetes, food